WEBVTT - Hell and Gone Murder Line: Chaim Weiss 0:00:46.550 --> 0:00:51.960 School of Humans. Helen Gone Murder Line actively investigates cold 0:00:52.000 --> 0:00:55.360 case murders in an effort to raise public awareness, invite 0:00:55.400 --> 0:00:58.780 witnesses to come forward, and present evidence that could potentially 0:00:58.820 --> 0:01:02.920 be further investigated by law enforcement. While we value insights 0:01:02.960 --> 0:01:06.140 from family and community members, their statements should not be 0:01:06.180 --> 0:01:09.920 considered evidence and point to the challenges of verifying facts 0:01:10.020 --> 0:01:14.020 inherent in cold cases. We remind listeners that everyone is 0:01:14.080 --> 0:01:17.140 presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. 0:01:17.980 --> 0:01:20.960 Nothing in the podcast is intended to state or imply 0:01:21.020 --> 0:01:23.600 that anyone who has not been convicted of a crime 0:01:24.170 --> 0:01:27.090 is guilty of any wrongdoing. Thanks for listening. 0:01:31.630 --> 0:01:37.730 It was Friday night, October 31, 1986, Halloween night. It 0:01:37.750 --> 0:01:41.810 was also the start of Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath. During 0:01:41.850 --> 0:01:46.250 the summer, massive crowds packed the local boardwalk. But in 0:01:46.300 --> 0:01:50.960 the spooky season, Long Beach gets quiet. The young men 0:01:51.040 --> 0:01:54.280 who lived in the dormitory of the Yeshiva, a Jewish 0:01:54.320 --> 0:01:59.100 school that focused on religious study, including the Talmud, Torah, 0:01:59.200 --> 0:02:02.640 and Jewish law, had to follow a strict list of rules. 0:02:03.620 --> 0:02:06.600 This was a boarding school, and the young men's classes 0:02:06.720 --> 0:02:11.160 were located about three blocks away. After finishing their daytime 0:02:11.200 --> 0:02:15.520 courses and their mandatory one-hour evening study time, the young 0:02:15.580 --> 0:02:19.820 men returned to the dorms, housed inside a sprawling converted 0:02:19.860 --> 0:02:25.210 mansion at 63 East Beach Street. There were 45 young 0:02:25.250 --> 0:02:28.910 men in that dormitory. Most of them shared their quarters 0:02:29.030 --> 0:02:33.610 with roommates. But 15-year-old Haim Weiss was one of only 0:02:33.690 --> 0:02:36.370 two students in the entire building who lived in a 0:02:36.410 --> 0:02:42.850 private room, room 303. Because work is strictly prohibited on 0:02:42.870 --> 0:02:46.910 the Sabbath, these students could not strike matches or turn 0:02:46.950 --> 0:02:49.790 lights off and on, and it was dark in that mansion. 0:02:50.570 --> 0:02:54.150 To accommodate them, there were lights left on on the 0:02:54.190 --> 0:02:58.560 third floor, and these lights had been left burning continuously 0:02:58.880 --> 0:03:03.440 since Friday afternoon. Following their dinner and Friday night services, 0:03:03.460 --> 0:03:06.800 Chaim had been up late studying under one of those 0:03:06.960 --> 0:03:11.230 overhead lamps with a classmate. He read alongside his study 0:03:11.270 --> 0:03:15.690 partner until somewhere between 12.45 and 1 a.m. in the 0:03:15.770 --> 0:03:20.160 early morning hours of November 1st. Then, Haim went back 0:03:20.190 --> 0:03:24.460 to his room. Haim was an exceptional student who specifically 0:03:24.540 --> 0:03:29.500 chose the yeshiva for its prestigious academic reputation. He spent 0:03:29.560 --> 0:03:34.200 his days immersed in these religious texts, but he also 0:03:34.300 --> 0:03:39.800 enjoyed secular activities like chess and basketball. Haim had come 0:03:39.840 --> 0:03:43.460 to the school the year before, in ninth grade. His father, 0:03:43.760 --> 0:03:48.240 Anton Weiss, his mother, his 11-year-old brother, and his 7-year-old 0:03:48.280 --> 0:03:53.180 little sister lived on Staten Island. Anton was a successful businessman. 0:03:53.980 --> 0:03:57.630 He later told a Newsday reporter that Haim, whose name 0:03:57.980 --> 0:04:01.330 literally translates to life, had never been out of his 0:04:01.390 --> 0:04:05.960 sight before leaving for the boarding school. Anton told Newsday 0:04:06.220 --> 0:04:10.060 that he and his wife had openly cried the day 0:04:10.120 --> 0:04:11.970 they dropped their son off at the school for the 0:04:12.010 --> 0:04:16.770 first time. The autumn air was cold that night, dropping 0:04:16.810 --> 0:04:21.430 down into the low 40s. Sometime between 1.20 a.m. and 0:04:21.430 --> 0:04:25.420 6 a.m. on November 1st, while Chaim lay asleep in 0:04:25.440 --> 0:04:30.140 his room, an intruder entered. At some point between around 0:04:30.140 --> 0:04:34.350 7.30 and 8 a.m. later that morning, the students gathered 0:04:34.390 --> 0:04:38.230 downstairs to start their morning prayers. But a faculty member 0:04:38.310 --> 0:04:42.940 immediately noticed that Haim's seat was empty. The adult dormitory 0:04:43.000 --> 0:04:46.860 supervisor climbed the stairs back to the third floor, walked 0:04:46.880 --> 0:04:51.410 down the hallway, and opened the door to room 303. 0:04:51.410 --> 0:04:55.170 The first thing he noticed was a shocking chill. That 0:04:55.330 --> 0:04:59.950 room was freezing. This was a concerning detail because Haim's 0:05:00.050 --> 0:05:03.710 friends later told investigators that He had been feeling sick 0:05:04.410 --> 0:05:08.730 and was actively taking antibiotics for a sore throat. So 0:05:08.790 --> 0:05:11.760 they wondered why he would leave a window open in 0:05:11.840 --> 0:05:16.260 freezing weather. The faculty member looked at Haim's bed and 0:05:16.360 --> 0:05:20.160 saw his feet propped against the headboard. Then on the floor, 0:05:20.700 --> 0:05:24.360 he saw something covered in blood. It was the rest 0:05:24.420 --> 0:05:27.760 of Haim's body. His skull had been shattered by a 0:05:27.820 --> 0:05:33.000 sequence of catastrophic crushing blows from delivered with immense velocity 0:05:33.180 --> 0:05:37.390 and force. The attack was so precise and so violent 0:05:37.890 --> 0:05:41.210 that it didn't just kill him. It severed his spinal 0:05:41.250 --> 0:05:45.730 column at the base of the neck. I'm Katherine Townsend. 0:05:46.270 --> 0:05:49.170 Over the past eight years of making my true crime podcast, 0:05:49.190 --> 0:05:52.090 Hell and Gone, I've learned that there is no such 0:05:52.130 --> 0:05:56.230 thing as a small town where murder never happens. I've 0:05:56.270 --> 0:05:58.890 received hundreds of messages from people all around the country 0:05:59.500 --> 0:06:02.180 asking for help with an unsolved murder that's affected them, 0:06:02.600 --> 0:06:06.360 their families, and their communities. If you have a case 0:06:06.400 --> 0:06:08.710 you'd like me and my team to look into, you 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:10.310 can reach out to us at our Hell and Gone 0:06:10.350 --> 0:06:12.070 Murder Line at 678-744-6145. That's 678-744-6145. Or you can send 0:06:12.110 --> 0:06:14.270 us a message on Instagram at hellandgonepod. This is Hell 0:06:14.430 --> 0:07:15.810 and Gone Murder Line. Within minutes after the horrifying discovery 0:07:16.010 --> 0:07:20.610 of Haim Weiss's body, The peaceful, studious atmosphere of the 0:07:20.650 --> 0:07:24.610 yeshiva of Long Beach was shattered. The police were called, 0:07:24.670 --> 0:07:29.120 the students were corralled, and the peaceful Sabbath morning became 0:07:29.240 --> 0:07:32.580 ground zero for one of the most terrifying, bizarre, and 0:07:32.740 --> 0:07:35.400 intractable murder mysteries in the history of the state of 0:07:35.440 --> 0:07:40.450 New York. When the detectives from Nassau County Police Homicide 0:07:40.470 --> 0:07:44.930 Squad arrived at 63 East Beach Street, they found a 0:07:45.010 --> 0:07:48.980 crime scene that seemed to defy logic. The school, as 0:07:49.040 --> 0:07:52.080 we said before, was basically an old mansion that had 0:07:52.120 --> 0:07:56.340 been refurbed and separated into dormitories. The layout of the 0:07:56.400 --> 0:08:00.600 school will become extremely important later in solving this mystery. 0:08:01.640 --> 0:08:03.900 Nothing was out of place in the room other than 0:08:03.920 --> 0:08:06.590 the victim. It didn't look like there had been a fight. 0:08:06.660 --> 0:08:09.690 There were no obvious signs of foul play. There was 0:08:09.830 --> 0:08:13.890 also no obvious sign of a break-in. Since the window 0:08:13.930 --> 0:08:18.360 was open, police wondered... Could the killer or killers have 0:08:18.420 --> 0:08:22.140 come in that way? Because whoever came in must have 0:08:22.180 --> 0:08:26.080 done so quietly. The medical examiner found no signs of 0:08:26.120 --> 0:08:30.700 defensive wounds on Haim's hands or forearms and believed that 0:08:30.780 --> 0:08:34.650 Haim had been attacked while he was asleep. Chaim was 0:08:34.730 --> 0:08:37.340 found on the floor with his feet propped up against 0:08:37.380 --> 0:08:40.920 the bed frame, which meant that the killer was probably 0:08:41.040 --> 0:08:45.100 standing directly over him when the killer hit him with 0:08:45.140 --> 0:08:49.220 what was described as a heavy bladed murder weapon. And 0:08:49.240 --> 0:08:53.510 Chaim had been killed instantly. These were not the clean 0:08:53.600 --> 0:08:57.690 cuts of a knife. They were wide crushing gashes that 0:08:57.750 --> 0:09:01.480 indicated a sharp edged tool. Something more like a hatchet 0:09:01.840 --> 0:09:06.260 or a fireman's axe or a heavy cleaver. Forensic pathology 0:09:06.300 --> 0:09:10.800 indicated that the weapon left two distinct, huge fracture patterns 0:09:10.920 --> 0:09:14.480 on Haim's skull. He was stabbed multiple times in the 0:09:14.540 --> 0:09:17.750 face and the neck and the head and suffered a 0:09:17.830 --> 0:09:22.130 laceration of the brain. Haim was still wearing his pajamas 0:09:22.890 --> 0:09:26.230 and there was no sign of sexual assault. Nothing was 0:09:26.290 --> 0:09:28.710 missing from the room, so there was also no sign 0:09:28.750 --> 0:09:34.680 of robbery. But then came the forensic timeline. Investigators figured 0:09:34.780 --> 0:09:39.080 out that someone had returned to room 303 to move 0:09:39.140 --> 0:09:43.710 Haim's body after the attack. They figured this out because 0:09:43.950 --> 0:09:48.190 although Haim was discovered on the floor, a detailed examination 0:09:48.230 --> 0:09:52.130 of evidence proved that his body had actually remained in 0:09:52.200 --> 0:09:56.200 the bed for several hours after he was killed. Forensic 0:09:56.240 --> 0:10:00.470 investigators figured this out because of studying the lividity patterns. 0:10:01.310 --> 0:10:05.130 When a person dies and their heart stops pumping, gravity 0:10:05.210 --> 0:10:07.750 causes the blood to settle into the lowest points of 0:10:07.770 --> 0:10:12.490 the body. This creates a distinct purplish discoloration on the skin. 0:10:13.530 --> 0:10:18.810 When the medical examiner inspected Haim, the internal lividity patterns 0:10:19.290 --> 0:10:22.450 did not match the exact posture in which he was found, 0:10:22.790 --> 0:10:26.940 sprawled across the bed. It takes approximately two to six 0:10:26.980 --> 0:10:32.160 hours for lividity to fix permanently in place. In Heim's case, 0:10:32.560 --> 0:10:36.610 the blood had settled into a lying flat position, but 0:10:36.650 --> 0:10:40.090 the body was found directly on the linoleum floor with 0:10:40.110 --> 0:10:42.810 the feet awkwardly propped up on the bed frame, so 0:10:42.830 --> 0:10:47.000 the feet were obliterated. the torso, which meant that someone 0:10:47.040 --> 0:10:49.960 had come in and moved Haim's body in the middle 0:10:49.980 --> 0:10:54.260 of the night. According to lead detective Dawn Daly, the 0:10:54.340 --> 0:10:58.650 crime scene analysis indicated that Haim's body had been handled 0:10:58.750 --> 0:11:03.430 and moved twice post-mortem. It was first moved from the 0:11:03.450 --> 0:11:06.450 bed to the ground, and then later shifted to another 0:11:06.490 --> 0:11:10.900 position on the floor, roughly two feet away. And there 0:11:10.920 --> 0:11:15.720 was also another strange detail. Someone left a lit candle 0:11:16.020 --> 0:11:20.470 in the room. So, one of the first questions that 0:11:20.510 --> 0:11:23.970 was asked is, was the killer someone from inside the 0:11:23.990 --> 0:11:28.210 school or outside? And the second question was, who moved 0:11:28.250 --> 0:11:32.490 that body? Was it the killer or someone else? Maybe 0:11:32.590 --> 0:11:35.990 trying to help him, maybe to administer first aid, or 0:11:36.060 --> 0:11:39.660 maybe just to confuse the crime scene. From the beginning, 0:11:39.740 --> 0:11:43.220 detectives admitted that they were baffled by the circumstances of 0:11:43.260 --> 0:11:49.340 this case. Detective Sergeant John Nolan told Newsday that it was, quote, 0:11:49.360 --> 0:11:53.720 a very bizarre, motiveless crime and appears to be murder 0:11:53.840 --> 0:11:59.880 for the sake of murder. Police did investigate the possibility 0:11:59.950 --> 0:12:02.490 that someone from the outside could have come up the 0:12:02.530 --> 0:12:06.150 fire escape and climbed in the window, especially because it 0:12:06.190 --> 0:12:11.040 was Halloween night. Detectives investigated reports that on that Friday night, 0:12:11.510 --> 0:12:14.240 a couple of students at the school had been chased 0:12:14.400 --> 0:12:17.540 and egged, but this was put down to just random 0:12:17.720 --> 0:12:22.570 Halloween pranks. At the time, though, there was another killer 0:12:22.720 --> 0:12:26.020 operating in Long Beach. there had been a series of 0:12:26.060 --> 0:12:32.330 attacks by a hatchet-wielding assailant starting in the summer of 1986, 0:12:32.330 --> 0:12:51.680 mainly targeting seniors living near the boardwalk. In February of 1987, 0:12:51.680 --> 0:12:55.880 Detective Lieutenant Joe Morrison told Newsday that the first four 0:12:55.940 --> 0:13:00.380 boardwalk attacks all had similarities. All victims were struck on 0:13:00.400 --> 0:13:03.290 the upper body. None of the victims had signs of 0:13:03.330 --> 0:13:07.830 sexual intent. And no property was stolen. But the detective 0:13:07.870 --> 0:13:11.430 told the newspaper that police found no link between the 0:13:11.490 --> 0:13:17.130 summer 1986 boardwalk bludgeonings and the Haim Weiss case. And 0:13:17.210 --> 0:13:20.030 detectives began to focus more and more on the theories. 0:13:20.510 --> 0:13:23.810 that the killer had an intimate familiarity with the school's 0:13:23.890 --> 0:13:27.670 inner layout. Whoever came into the room did not seem 0:13:27.710 --> 0:13:32.180 like someone who just stumbled in. Detectives believed they had 0:13:32.250 --> 0:13:35.280 to know the layout of the school and that they 0:13:35.380 --> 0:13:39.160 knew that they were entering one of only two private rooms. 0:13:39.900 --> 0:13:42.860 This did not seem like a random crime of opportunity. 0:13:44.360 --> 0:13:48.180 Detectives continued to say that they had ruled out anti-Semitism 0:13:48.260 --> 0:13:52.380 as a motive. or any kind of sexual assault or robbery. 0:13:53.180 --> 0:13:57.090 But I'm wondering how did detectives rule those possibilities out? 0:13:58.110 --> 0:14:01.470 And if the motive was not robbery or sexual assault 0:14:01.570 --> 0:14:06.630 or anti-Semitism, what was it? Another mystery was the murder weapon, 0:14:07.320 --> 0:14:11.940 because police never found it. Police did find a knife 0:14:12.160 --> 0:14:15.760 on school grounds a few hours after Haim's murder, but 0:14:15.820 --> 0:14:18.730 they found no blood on it. and never confirmed that 0:14:18.750 --> 0:14:22.010 it was used in the attack. In an interview with 0:14:22.070 --> 0:14:26.150 Newsday in October of 1987, Heim's father said that he 0:14:26.220 --> 0:14:30.000 was dealing with some friction with detectives because he admitted 0:14:30.260 --> 0:14:34.020 he inserted himself into the investigation. But he said that 0:14:34.060 --> 0:14:37.160 he didn't care. He just wanted to find his son's 0:14:37.200 --> 0:14:40.760 killer and believed that the killer had outsmarted the police. 0:14:42.490 --> 0:14:45.890 Another really big mystery in this case was the open window, 0:14:46.470 --> 0:14:50.370 because detectives could not figure out why that window would 0:14:50.390 --> 0:14:54.250 have been left open on a freezing November morning. But 0:14:54.570 --> 0:14:59.230 consulting with scholars in traditional Jewish customs provided a chilling 0:14:59.340 --> 0:15:05.400 alternative explanation. In certain traditional Orthodox circles, it is an 0:15:05.540 --> 0:15:08.780 ancient custom to immediately throw open the window of a 0:15:08.840 --> 0:15:11.860 room where a person has died. This is supposed to 0:15:11.940 --> 0:15:15.450 allow the soul to depart the physical space and return 0:15:15.470 --> 0:15:19.570 to the heavens. It was also reportedly customary for the 0:15:19.610 --> 0:15:22.650 body to be moved to the lowest and coolest point 0:15:22.870 --> 0:15:26.060 of the room, which in Heim's case would be the floor. 0:15:26.980 --> 0:15:29.640 But this part is what I don't understand because I 0:15:29.720 --> 0:15:33.280 did a deep dive into Jewish law. Admittedly, I am 0:15:33.380 --> 0:15:35.860 not an expert in this area, but I did do 0:15:35.940 --> 0:15:39.500 quite a bit of research, and it seems like moving 0:15:39.580 --> 0:15:42.700 the body in this way would actually violate Jewish law, 0:15:42.880 --> 0:15:45.900 not follow it, because you're not allowed to move a 0:15:45.950 --> 0:15:50.210 body on the Sabbath. Jewish law does allow a body 0:15:50.270 --> 0:15:54.710 to be moved under certain circumstances, but these are very 0:15:54.810 --> 0:15:58.510 extreme circumstances, such as protecting it from being destroyed by 0:15:58.550 --> 0:16:01.150 an active fire or keeping it from being eaten by 0:16:01.220 --> 0:16:04.990 wild animals. None of these conditions applied in Haim's room. 0:16:06.190 --> 0:16:09.890 A local rabbi spoke to the Jewish star, and he 0:16:09.990 --> 0:16:12.750 told that publication that he believed that whoever moved the 0:16:12.790 --> 0:16:15.490 body and lit the candle was acting out of what 0:16:15.570 --> 0:16:19.770 they perceived to be respect, but that, quote, lighting a 0:16:19.830 --> 0:16:23.330 candle for the dead does not override the laws of Shabbat, 0:16:23.910 --> 0:16:28.970 end quote. The candle is more complicated. because the candle 0:16:29.130 --> 0:16:32.290 would have been a direct violation if it happened before 0:16:32.350 --> 0:16:36.230 Saturday night. But then I looked at a lot of 0:16:36.270 --> 0:16:39.530 historical newspaper reports, and a lot of them said that 0:16:39.570 --> 0:16:42.640 a rabbi had asked permission to light that candle. And 0:16:42.660 --> 0:16:46.180 the reports don't specify a time frame for that. So 0:16:46.300 --> 0:16:54.070 that could have happened after sundown. Music Maybe the killer 0:16:54.110 --> 0:16:57.890 was a fellow student, someone who panicked and wasn't thinking 0:16:58.050 --> 0:17:03.570 about following Jewish law. Initially, police had assumed that whoever 0:17:03.670 --> 0:17:07.090 moved Haim's body was trying to render first aid or 0:17:07.230 --> 0:17:12.620 trying to follow some maybe misguided Jewish custom. But all 0:17:12.640 --> 0:17:15.620 of the students were interviewed and all of them insisted 0:17:15.860 --> 0:17:19.100 no one touched Haim. So were they just scared to 0:17:19.160 --> 0:17:22.430 admit that they had moved him? Or could someone have 0:17:22.450 --> 0:17:27.530 been covering up for the killer? The candle continued to 0:17:27.570 --> 0:17:30.570 confuse investigators over the years, and it turned out there 0:17:30.630 --> 0:17:35.020 wasn't just one mysterious candle, there were two. As we mentioned, 0:17:35.160 --> 0:17:38.300 it turned out the first candle wasn't actually a mystery. 0:17:38.960 --> 0:17:42.480 At some point, a rabbi asked permission from police to 0:17:42.560 --> 0:17:47.420 light a traditional seven-day memorial candle inside room 303, which 0:17:47.500 --> 0:17:50.840 the police agreed to. before the room was sealed and 0:17:50.900 --> 0:17:54.990 taped shut with crime scene tape. But then, on November 2nd, 0:17:55.430 --> 0:17:58.250 when detectives went to the room to perform a perimeter check, 0:17:58.970 --> 0:18:03.150 they found a second burning memorial candle sitting directly next 0:18:03.170 --> 0:18:06.700 to the first one. But no one ever admitted to 0:18:06.760 --> 0:18:11.270 lighting it. And Detective Daly later noted the deep frustration 0:18:11.370 --> 0:18:15.250 of this moment. He publicly said that if someone had 0:18:15.310 --> 0:18:17.760 lit that second candle out of a genuine gesture of 0:18:17.840 --> 0:18:21.420 sympathy or love for Chaim, there was no logical reason 0:18:21.700 --> 0:18:24.800 for them to hide it from the homicide squad. From 0:18:24.840 --> 0:18:28.080 the beginning, there seemed to be a clash of cultures 0:18:28.300 --> 0:18:32.450 that hindered this investigation. Because it was Shabbat, the school's 0:18:32.520 --> 0:18:36.400 administration and the rabbis famously informed the detectives that they 0:18:36.460 --> 0:18:40.780 could not fully cooperate. They couldn't write down timelines or 0:18:40.860 --> 0:18:45.520 do interviews with secular authorities until the Sabbath officially ended, 0:18:45.660 --> 0:18:49.170 which would have been after sundown on Saturday night. So 0:18:49.210 --> 0:18:54.270 this created a 10-hour investigative delay that was heavily frustrating 0:18:54.350 --> 0:18:59.480 for the homicide squad. Another question I had was, Why 0:18:59.580 --> 0:19:03.250 was Chaim assigned the single room? And could that have 0:19:03.310 --> 0:19:06.890 had something to do with his murder? Chaim's father told 0:19:06.970 --> 0:19:09.850 Newsday that he had asked a rabbi this question, and 0:19:09.930 --> 0:19:12.590 he had been told that Chaim had been assigned to 0:19:12.650 --> 0:19:16.440 the single room because his interaction with the other boys 0:19:16.980 --> 0:19:20.600 wasn't good. That's a quote from the newspaper article. This 0:19:20.660 --> 0:19:24.860 was because, according to Anton, Chaim's father, Chaim wore secular 0:19:24.940 --> 0:19:28.780 clothes and he was described as immature. which Anton said 0:19:28.860 --> 0:19:32.180 made his stomach turn. But the rabbis didn't give a 0:19:32.220 --> 0:19:36.120 reason publicly for the single room. They never said anything 0:19:36.220 --> 0:19:40.120 publicly about problems with Haim in the school. In fact, 0:19:40.640 --> 0:19:42.920 they said he was a good student with a lot 0:19:42.940 --> 0:19:47.480 of promise. But maybe Haim had a conflict with another 0:19:47.520 --> 0:19:51.060 student or a faculty member, one that his dad wasn't 0:19:51.100 --> 0:19:56.320 aware of. In 1992, Unsolved Mysteries filmed an episode about 0:19:56.340 --> 0:20:00.610 this case. And Nassau homicide detective Don Daly told the 0:20:00.650 --> 0:20:04.110 TV program that a jogger told police that they had 0:20:04.190 --> 0:20:07.190 seen someone who appeared to be a yeshiva student on 0:20:07.230 --> 0:20:10.930 the boardwalk about 15 minutes before Haim's body was found. 0:20:11.610 --> 0:20:14.030 The detective said that that would have been unusual to 0:20:14.070 --> 0:20:16.210 come out to the boardwalk and hang out there before 0:20:16.290 --> 0:20:20.020 morning prayer. So he wanted to find out who that 0:20:20.080 --> 0:20:25.350 person was. But to my knowledge, detectives have never identified 0:20:25.390 --> 0:20:29.640 that person or even positively confirmed that there was a 0:20:29.720 --> 0:20:33.070 student out on the boardwalk that morning. Could a killer 0:20:33.150 --> 0:20:36.770 have come in from the outside? Police said the killer 0:20:36.810 --> 0:20:39.430 could have accessed the room in a few ways. A 0:20:39.490 --> 0:20:42.370 fire escape door leads to the same stairwell as the 0:20:42.410 --> 0:20:46.280 bedroom door of Heim's room. And the stairwell leads down 0:20:46.320 --> 0:20:51.260 to an old service entrance. The Nassau County Police Department 0:20:51.540 --> 0:20:54.540 realized very quickly that that they were not just fighting 0:20:54.600 --> 0:20:57.740 a killer, they were fighting what they perceived to be 0:20:57.860 --> 0:21:01.660 a wall of silence. The yeshiva of Long Beach was 0:21:01.760 --> 0:21:07.300 a closed ecosystem. The young men who attended school there lived, ate, slept, 0:21:07.400 --> 0:21:10.600 and breathed the Torah. They had minimal contact with the 0:21:10.640 --> 0:21:15.240 secular world outside. They didn't watch television or read local newspapers, 0:21:15.900 --> 0:21:18.720 and they didn't really participate in the secular culture of 0:21:18.760 --> 0:21:22.930 Long Beach. the detectives set up an interrogation room inside 0:21:22.950 --> 0:21:26.740 the school. They called in every single student who lived 0:21:26.780 --> 0:21:29.540 on the third floor, along with the rabbis, the teachers, 0:21:29.640 --> 0:21:32.680 and the maintenance staff. Students claimed that they had not 0:21:32.760 --> 0:21:36.280 heard anything going on in Haim's room or seen anything 0:21:36.340 --> 0:21:40.840 weird on Halloween night. Again, the politics of the school 0:21:40.960 --> 0:21:45.560 made the investigation more complicated because in many ultra-Orthodox communities, 0:21:45.600 --> 0:21:50.650 there is a deep-seated historical distrust of secular authorities, And 0:21:50.810 --> 0:21:54.180 there's also this belief in the community that internal matters, 0:21:54.260 --> 0:21:57.420 no matter how severe, should be handled within the community 0:21:58.000 --> 0:22:00.950 rather than by the secular courts and the secular police. 0:22:02.310 --> 0:22:06.210 There's also an additional complication. There's another piece of Jewish law. 0:22:06.990 --> 0:22:11.280 It's a strict prohibition against derogatory speech or gossiping about 0:22:11.370 --> 0:22:15.000 fellow Jews. So, viewed this way, to point a finger 0:22:15.100 --> 0:22:18.460 at a classmate or a rabbi, even in the context 0:22:18.520 --> 0:22:22.250 of a brutal murder investigation, would be viewed by some 0:22:22.310 --> 0:22:26.050 people within the walls of the yeshiva as a profound 0:22:26.290 --> 0:22:31.360 spiritual betrayal. So, frustrated by the lack of local progress, 0:22:31.880 --> 0:22:35.490 Nassau County detectives went to the FBI. They asked for 0:22:35.550 --> 0:22:40.450 assistance from the Behavioral Science Unit from Quantico. The FBI 0:22:40.530 --> 0:22:43.760 came back to the local detectives and told them something 0:22:43.780 --> 0:22:46.900 that turned the investigation on its head. The Bureau said 0:22:46.960 --> 0:22:49.930 straight up that they did not believe that an outsider 0:22:50.150 --> 0:22:53.460 had committed this murder. They said the likelihood of a 0:22:53.540 --> 0:22:57.840 random killer entering a highly secure, locked religious facility on 0:22:57.880 --> 0:23:02.210 Halloween night, then navigating a maze of unfamiliar corridors to 0:23:02.250 --> 0:23:06.440 the third floor selecting one specific boy out of dozens 0:23:06.480 --> 0:23:10.700 of unlocked rooms, brutally hacking him to death, then moving 0:23:10.740 --> 0:23:13.300 the body in that way, this kind of misguided attempt 0:23:13.360 --> 0:23:16.980 to follow orthodox death rituals, and leaving without a blood 0:23:17.040 --> 0:23:24.090 trail or without taking anything was extremely unlikely. The behavior 0:23:24.170 --> 0:23:27.290 profiler from the FBI believed that the killer was an insider. 0:23:28.490 --> 0:23:32.420 Once the insider theory was officially established, the focus of 0:23:32.440 --> 0:23:37.280 the investigation shifted heavily toward the faculty and the internal 0:23:37.320 --> 0:23:41.040 dynamics of the school. And that is when the first 0:23:41.180 --> 0:24:02.200 cracks in the school's pristine reputation started to appear. Anton 0:24:02.240 --> 0:24:06.160 Weiss told police that during the summer of 1986, just 0:24:06.300 --> 0:24:09.560 months before his death, Chaim had been attending a summer 0:24:09.600 --> 0:24:13.140 camp run by the Yeshiva Network. While he was there, 0:24:13.640 --> 0:24:16.760 Chaim had gotten super upset and cried during phone calls 0:24:16.800 --> 0:24:20.260 to his dad, begging his father to let him come home. 0:24:20.980 --> 0:24:25.070 But Chaim never told his father what was upsetting him. Then, 0:24:25.370 --> 0:24:29.850 while Chaim was visiting his grandparents in Europe, Rabbi Avram Cooper, 0:24:30.210 --> 0:24:33.850 the principal at the Yeshiva, called the Weiss family home 0:24:33.990 --> 0:24:37.350 and he asked to meet with Haim. Records indicate that 0:24:37.410 --> 0:24:39.950 as soon as Haim arrived back in New York, his 0:24:40.010 --> 0:24:43.690 parents drove him directly to Rabbi Cooper's private residence in 0:24:43.750 --> 0:24:48.660 Borough Park, Brooklyn. Anton Weiss stated that the principal instructed 0:24:48.680 --> 0:24:51.680 the parents to wait outside in their car while he 0:24:51.740 --> 0:24:56.260 talked to the 15-year-old inside his house. That private meeting 0:24:56.300 --> 0:25:00.190 between Rabbi Cooper and Haim lasted about 10 minutes. According 0:25:00.230 --> 0:25:03.310 to Haim's father, When his son returned to the car, 0:25:03.410 --> 0:25:07.730 he appeared visibly upset, but he refused to discuss what 0:25:07.770 --> 0:25:13.740 happened during that conversation. When investigative journalists later confronted Rabbi 0:25:13.780 --> 0:25:17.720 Cooper regarding the nature of the 1986 meeting, the principal 0:25:17.780 --> 0:25:21.330 declined to provide an explanation. In a recorded 2017 broadcast 0:25:21.350 --> 0:25:27.310 interview with Pix11 News, When asked directly about that encounter, 0:25:27.830 --> 0:25:31.910 Rabbi Cooper stated, I have no answers, before walking away 0:25:32.010 --> 0:25:37.790 from reporters. The police did polygraph tests, many members of 0:25:37.850 --> 0:25:41.330 staff and the student body, but there were no suspects 0:25:41.370 --> 0:25:45.050 developed as a result of that. The Nassau County Police 0:25:45.090 --> 0:25:49.050 Crime Lab searched every square inch of room 303 for 0:25:49.090 --> 0:25:52.250 a definitive piece of biological evidence that could break the 0:25:52.270 --> 0:25:55.680 case wide open. but the lack of physical evidence turned 0:25:55.760 --> 0:25:58.860 out to be a serious problem for detectives because not 0:25:59.040 --> 0:26:01.500 only had the killer been strong, they had been clean. 0:26:02.020 --> 0:26:04.540 There were no bloody palm prints on the white walls, 0:26:05.140 --> 0:26:07.980 no latent fingerprints on the frame of the open window, 0:26:08.700 --> 0:26:12.200 and no traces of foreign blood or tissue that could 0:26:12.240 --> 0:26:16.540 later be tested for DNA anywhere. And police searched that 0:26:16.580 --> 0:26:20.360 school from top to bottom, including draining the plumbing fixtures, 0:26:20.510 --> 0:26:24.270 ripping open the ventilation shafts, and searching the roof spaces 0:26:24.370 --> 0:26:29.070 and the boilers underneath the building. They even sent divers 0:26:29.210 --> 0:26:32.570 into the Atlantic Ocean just a few blocks away, sweeping 0:26:32.630 --> 0:26:35.530 the surf line for any sign of a discarded iron 0:26:35.590 --> 0:26:40.730 tool or a hatchet. But they never found one. They 0:26:40.830 --> 0:26:45.500 did find one potentially explosive piece of evidence, a single 0:26:45.580 --> 0:26:49.160 strand of hair found on Haim's bedding near his neck. 0:26:50.060 --> 0:26:54.430 preliminary microscopic analysis confirmed that this hair did not belong 0:26:54.470 --> 0:26:57.510 to Haim Weiss. Now, we don't know a ton about 0:26:57.550 --> 0:27:01.600 this hair. Remember, this was back in 1986, so DNA 0:27:01.630 --> 0:27:06.770 testing was in its absolute infancy. Back then, the polymerase 0:27:06.870 --> 0:27:10.330 chain reaction method, this is the method that lets forensic 0:27:10.370 --> 0:27:13.970 science replicate tiny amounts of DNA to create a profile, 0:27:14.690 --> 0:27:18.350 was not yet a tool that investigators could use. Which meant, 0:27:18.580 --> 0:27:22.060 back then, if investigators had tested the hair using the 0:27:22.100 --> 0:27:26.000 methods available to them, the hair could have been completely destroyed. 0:27:26.840 --> 0:27:29.540 And if the test result was inconclusive, which is highly 0:27:29.620 --> 0:27:33.460 likely given the technology of the time, The only definitive 0:27:33.500 --> 0:27:36.980 piece of physical evidence detectives had from that room would 0:27:37.020 --> 0:27:41.570 have been lost forever. So the investigator in charge decided 0:27:41.680 --> 0:27:44.230 not to test the hair. They decided to store it 0:27:44.400 --> 0:27:50.490 in a climate-controlled vault. Meanwhile, Haim's father, Anton, refused to 0:27:50.550 --> 0:27:54.430 let his son's memory be buried. He went public, speaking 0:27:54.470 --> 0:27:57.850 to reporters about what he called the school's lack of cooperation. 0:27:58.640 --> 0:28:01.520 He appeared on local television programs. He wrote letters to 0:28:01.560 --> 0:28:05.360 community leaders. He was begging for someone to break the silence. 0:28:06.600 --> 0:28:10.890 Three years after Haim's murder, Anton Weiss filed a massive 0:28:10.890 --> 0:28:15.690 $ 15 million civil lawsuit against the yeshiva of Long Beach, 0:28:16.410 --> 0:28:20.170 accusing the school of severe negligence for failing to maintain 0:28:20.250 --> 0:28:24.250 basic physical safety and security measures to protect his 15-year-old son. 0:28:25.290 --> 0:28:28.920 The civil suit was eventually settled out of court. Meanwhile, 0:28:29.060 --> 0:28:33.650 the school was in turmoil. After Haim's murder, the students 0:28:33.710 --> 0:28:36.270 were scared that there could be a killer living among them, 0:28:36.770 --> 0:28:40.170 and parents started pulling their teens out of school. Court 0:28:40.210 --> 0:28:43.710 records obtained by Newsday showed that on December 16th, so 0:28:43.830 --> 0:28:48.130 six weeks after Haim's brutal murder, the Yeshiva's five trustees 0:28:48.570 --> 0:28:52.610 voted to sell the school. A group of Jewish residents 0:28:52.650 --> 0:28:55.350 in Long Beach ended up filing a lawsuit against the school. 0:28:55.780 --> 0:28:58.200 They were trying to block the move, They said the 0:28:58.270 --> 0:29:02.590 school was a critical asset for Jews in that community. Now, 0:29:02.630 --> 0:29:05.810 the timeline of this sale is interesting because it's disputed. 0:29:06.830 --> 0:29:10.950